Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that much of this was before the Minister's time as it goes back to 1991, which is a long time ago. We are on the fifth nitrates action programme. The first was introduced in 2006. Did every action that was recommended and required take place and was this audited and monitored? Did we have auditing and monitoring of all the recommendations and actions required under our nitrates action programmes so we can see where we fell down? The Minister is right. The reason this is happening is because we are not showing improvement in water quality. The nitrates directive is not about imposing hardship on farmers. It is about improving water quality, particularly with regard to the impact of nitrates in agriculture on water quality. This is where we need to get to. The nitrates action programmes were there to address this problem. Obviously, they have not worked to date or we would not be facing this because we are not seeing the improvement in water quality. Were all the actions in the five plans implemented? Were they implemented by everybody? Was enough advice and information given to farmers? Did we audit and improve as we went along?